


darkness, stillness, quiet

by riverbed



Series: do we not bleed [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, Panic Attacks, Protectiveness, Sensation Play, Waxplay, but pwp just the same, literal candlelight, weird feelings wrt consent and state of mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:21:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6231265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbed/pseuds/riverbed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>anxious during a storm, alexander seeks out a distraction.<br/>john is right where he always is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	darkness, stillness, quiet

The night is almost silver, mild with mist, and then the lightning breaks through the clouds.

When the low rumble of thunder shakes the apartment, John marks his place and rises from where he’d been reading on the bed, crossing out into the living room. Alex sits in a nest of blankets, curled up against the corner. There’s a mug in his hand - John’s home-mixed hot cocoa, Mom’s recipe. There’s a little bit of spice in it; cuts the sweetness. It’s Alex’s favorite, and as often as he makes it for him its effectiveness in making him feel better never seems to diminish.

“You doing okay?” John asks, and Alex takes a sip of the hot cocoa, the steam rising visibly in the low light. He smiles in answer, but it is not his easy grin - it is pained, a front. John comes closer, reaches for the blankets, but just as he does the lights flicker. Alex freezes. In the few moments of utter dark, John feels his ears tune sharply to Hamilton’s labored breathing. He scrambles in his jeans pocket for his Zippo, scurries about the apartment lighting candles. Two on the mantle, two on the kitchen island, one on each end table, one each in the bathroom and bedroom. He finishes just in time; out the window he can see the power fail floor by floor in the building across from them, and then their own is out, blue-black space surrounding each little flame.

“Alexander.” John is next to him now, right up against him under the blanket. Alex jumps a little, and the hot chocolate sloshes onto his hand. He winces, sets it on the end table. Cuddles close to John. “Thanks,” he says meekly, and John sighs, fond but exasperated. He doesn’t ask what for.

Alex tries to let himself enjoy this, the simplicity of being together, but it’s not enough - the rain slams sideways against the walls of their corner apartment, and the thunder rattles the windows, and it _sounds_ like it’s getting closer - Alex can’t be sure, but he _thinks,_ and it’s making him shake, making his stomach turn. He catastrophizes, imagines the wind picking him up and tossing him about. He needs a distraction. He needs something to overwhelm this, shut it off. Take him offline.

So he straddles John. He keeps the blanket wrapped loosely around them but swings a leg over John and sinks down in his lap, leaning in to nip at his lip and jaw, asking permission. John’s hands wrap comfortingly around his hips, but he tilts his head back, avoiding Alex’s lips. Alex pulls away, tilts his head, questions with his eyes. 

And God, John would love to indulge him without more protest. Give him everything he thinks he wants, take him and leave them both breathless and mindless and sated, but he has to know, has to be sure of his state of mind. He doesn’t feel good about being an outlet, about being second to the storm. He wants Alexander present, fully, from the get. He doesn’t want his anxious eyes and the way he yields in his vulnerability, lets John take and take and take. Alexander needs as readily as John does, and John knows it, but when he gets like this, jonesing for _something_ in his fear, his need unfocuses and blurs, and John always feels manipulative after, coercive. And somehow, cheap. It’s not a nice feeling.

So when Alexander starts rocking his hips, John holds them still. Draws it out. Makes him want for it. He will be sure of what Alex wants before he gives anything. He ignores Alexander’s mewls and lets him suck a bruise into his neck with his teeth on the skin, unreciprocative apart from the hands at his sides, thumbs digging into the front hollows of his hipbones to keep him static.

Alex is fine with this. He feels like John is reigning in him, can feel his focus honing, wants to prove to John whatever he needs proven. He works within John’s viselike grip, rolling his body to get closer, scrunching down for better access to his neck, shoving his jacket down and tugging his sleeve to the side to get at his shoulders. He feels small on John’s lap and seeks to feel smaller, wishes John would wrap around him and pin him down. He begs for it against John’s lips, promises the world to him, imagining the harsh torrent of rain into a soothing patter, pushing it back until it’s white noise. This feels like home, like the Islands, like the soothing constant back-and-forth of the ocean and the way he’d stand on the beach vying for more. He always wants more, always needs more; Alexander knows he’s insatiable, continually unsatisfied. He lets himself regress, to before the hurricane; as a child he fell asleep to rain, understood that the clear water nourished the ground for new growth, and bathed himself in it in anticipation. It is a nice fantasy to return to, the idea that the rain sparked something in him instead of making him hide in fear.

He’s not afraid for now. John has him. John is solid and beautiful and as close to him as another person can be. He’s protective and wary and aware when Alexander can’t be. That’s enough.

But he’s closed. Alexander wants him open, pouring out love, answering Alex’s pining with his own. He wants to provoke him into tearing down the wall that stays between them even with their chests this close, wants to claw into his soft boundaries and rip them to shreds. He’s needy, aching, and knows John is too. Alex knows exactly what he’s doing. Every minute shift of their hips against each other buries the fire deeper in Alexander, and before long he’s burning for it, reaching down to put his own hands over John’s on his hips and roll slowly in them, tilting his head back in invitation.

John makes a decision - he sees the open column of Alexander’s throat in the low light and makes a decision. He lurches forward, setting his teeth in. The skin is heated, slick, little licks of candlelight dancing in shadows across it, and John has a very dark idea as he lays kiss after sloppy kiss along Alexander’s neck. He nudges Alex away and summons all his willpower to get himself up and off the couch. He takes Alex’s hand, kisses his knuckles. “Come to bed,” he tells him, his voice low.

Alex swoons. He feels like he’s won, convinced John just like he always does. Made him weak for him. It makes him feel beautiful, special. He smiles up at him through his lashes, as coquettish as he can manage. John pulls him to the bedroom.

*

He ends up slumped over the bed. John’s touching him reverently, skating his hand over every inch of skin he can reach. It’s soothing. John’s hand is warm. Alex follows the brush of his fingertips, down his side, his hip, his thigh; something to consume his focus. John is humming as he impresses patterns into the skin. Alex’s eyes flutter closed. For once, he isn’t trying to predict. He arches his back, presents a little more obviously. He wants more. Lets it show.

John puts a hand in his hair, strokes then holds him down, his face pressed to the mattress. His breath hitches; he reminds himself he is safe. He breathes. John’s free hand ghosts against his hip again, this time dancing his fingertips on the back of his thigh. A light shiver runs through Alex’s body at the tease. The hand in his hair drags through it and down to rest at the small of his back, push downward so he arches even more. Alexander grits his teeth, anticipates.

Anticipates - not this. He couldn’t have imagined, couldn’t have dreamed… heat splashes against the small of his back and makes a little stream against his skin, cooling to a halt. He gasps with delayed realization and tries to jerk his head back to look, but John holds his head down, holds him steady and pours more candle wax on his back, slower this time, and Alex’s breath shakes out through it. Alexander feels his headspace shift, spiral. He’s floating, just slightly off, a bit removed from reality. Everything slows around him, kind of a halo of dark. He is grateful for the rain, grateful for the darkness, grateful for the softness of the fluffy blankets and the generosity of John Laurens.

John holds the candle, sure, and pours wax gently onto his skin, letting it cascade down his ass. Alexander shivers even under the heat. He is reminded of the tightness in his core, the pit of his stomach curling with excitement. This is more intense than he could have wished for, a distraction so dynamic his mind has to work its way around it very carefully, something all-consuming and wonderful. He has no faculties for anything else, for fear, for anxiety. He will let Laurens keep him on the precipice of this for eternity, heat of their skin and heat of the candle in the air as scent layered over their rushed breathing.

Alexander wiggles as another drop of wax hits him between his shoulder blades, and then in the center of his back, and then on his ass again, and he jolts at that one - the candle’s close, closer than before, barely a few inches above him, and it’s so much hotter at this distance and for a moment Alex’s brain short-circuits completely. It’s a blessed blankness, fuzzy white fading back in at the edges and blending to the opposite darkness, the real one, as John sets the candle on the bedside table and returns to running his hands soothingly down Alex’s sides. He focuses on that again and it grounds him, and he realizes there’s wetness in his eyes and he blinks it back, whispers _Please_ so pathetically but John seems to understand, never judges him. He lines himself up and pushes in, slow and slick with lube, and Alexander briefly wonders when he’d missed him preparing the situation but then John’s rocking into him, soft little arcs of his hips almost letting Alexander set the pace and his body demands more so deeply that it’s almost infinite so he takes the opportunity to prop himself up on his elbows and thrust back to meet John, fucking himself hard until John gets the hint and picks up where he left off, gripping Alex’s hips as hard as he had earlier in the living room and slamming into him over and over and over and over. Alex is being loud, begging, sobbing; out of control. His gut is coiling and his thighs are sore so he lets John hold him up as he wraps a hand around him and gets him coming apart almost immediately, collapsing flat on the mattress as John fucks him through his own release, his thrusts erratic, borderline painful. Alex revels in it, floats some more until John slides out of him and he distinctly feels all the tension in his body go with him. His muscles are jelly, his eyes closed of their own insistence. His head is clear. Blissfully, crystal clear. He can't draw up a coherent thought, even when he tries - he tries to think about the storm, but the little bug eating his brain about it seems to have finally gorged itself, taken more than its fill and died in shame of its gluttony. Everything around him may be spinning but inside is utter calm.

John is lying next to him, pressing soft kisses to his shoulders and hair. Alex snuggles up to him, wrapping the blanket round them both. A little cocoon of storm-shelter. Refuses to move much beyond that, lets John wrap him up and adjust them for comfort.

Eventually John says, “That was,” and Alex shushes him with a groan and then presses their lips together, chaste, almost unsure. He smiles, speaks against his lips. “I’m not getting up to blow out the candles,” he tells him, “but the dark is okay.”

"Noted," John teases, making no move to comply with the hinted request. If they burn in their sleep then they'll go down together - and John wonders in passing if he's Romeo or Juliet before he drifts off.


End file.
